The darkest corners of this room taste like home, the heady smell of vodka, smoke and heated friendship the lullaby to my adolescence. I sit curled up in a corner as my comrades fight life with rolling paper, masks and oscillating obsessions. Boredom is our favourite foe.
“What colour would J be?” C asks, her BlackBerry the new shape of her heart. She doesn’t look up, she’s forgotten how.
“Dark blue.” Z says, stubbing out a cigeratte in an overflowing ashtray. It looks like us. Z has his own theory on colours and shades - hues, tints, tones, the color spectrum on a high. He says people change but only so much. They still stick to the same colour zone, blues don’t become pinks. J can be intense and calm, mysterious and alluring, raging and quiet, shallow but in too deep – Dark blue. We raise our dirty beer stained glasses in acquiesce. J chugs, smiling.
“And R?” Lime green, we say easily – uncomplicated, smooth, happy, calm, comfortable, strong, pretty. She traces beer rings on the old scar scratched table, smiling.
D plays happy with brown - camouflage boy, K throws up the peace sign with yellow, C gets deep purple – she bares her teeth, loving it, F is orange – unreadable and sometimes, unreachable, Z is the colour of wine, someone you have to acquire a taste for. They're all shining smiles off each other.
“N?” they think. I wait.
“Red. In-your-face, fiery, fucking red.” I hold. Red – the colour of blood, the colour of passion, late sunsets, little girl ribbons, hearts, denial and danger. So attention seeking, so obviously uncomplicated, so sure of herself. I smile. I wonder if they all had colour coated secret smiles.
I don’t see red.
The pretty me screams at me for being ugly, the smart part for spitting stupidity, the intense side hates the superficial one and together we fight, light versus dark, dark versus light, me against myself. I hate and I hurt.
I see myself in black & white.
But those movies died a long long time ago.
